Arizona weekly citizen., 1887-07-16
BOGUS LITERARY REpuTATloNs.
Fashionable Folks Who Masquerade in Other Peoples Talent-A Curious Craze.

Fashionable Folks Who Masquerade in
 Other Peoples TaIent-A Curious Craze. I have young friend, really talented fellow, who if he hhd been cast upon tho town would have made place for him. self in literature He happens to enjoy a competency, however, and takes life iar too easily 10 disturb himself with more serious employment than the killing of time. He is fond of making literary ex- periments in his more industrious mo- ments, and has quite collection of man. uscript slowed away in his desk, which he is continually promising himself to revise and polish up for publication Some of these affairs, stories, sketches, little farces, fragments of verse, he has read tO me and they have invariably been sufficiently ingenious in construction and good in quality to impress themselves upon my memory.
 Judge my amazeInent, therefore, when I found one of the stories had listened to over the cigars and l,rog in his apartments printed in a prominent magazine week or so ago. Judge of my further astOnish- ment when l noted that it was credited not to the real author but to @ certain woman who enjoys quite a literary repu- tation in society. one of the swell amateurs who have made writing for the press a fashion. There had been a sort Of senti- mental weakness on my friends part for this person I knew IL was evident now that it had gone the length of his lending her his talent Co masquerade in.
 got quite a collection of her other stO- ries together. or rather of those she has been credited with writing, and read them attentively There was no mistaking their authorship. Every one bore the earmarks of my idle amateur. who would not take the trouble tO seek an outlet for his talent, but was ready to bestow it on a woman who had caught his platonic fancy. When l next met him l taxed him with this in justice Co himselE but he laughed the re- proof lightly oil.
 Bless your innocent soulr' he said. ''They all do it. Do you suppose the stories Miss x. and Mrs. |. sign are any more original with them than Mrs. /. s are with her The only difference Is that they buy theirs from some professional scribbler. Mrs. z. happens To get hers for less substantial price. "
 CuriOusly enough, only couple of nights later, l encountered at the theatre an able literary hack whom have known for many years He looked unusually prosperous, considering his old estate. He was, ho said, earning a good salary as sub-editOr on a morning paper, and put ting in his odd time writing stories and poetry. AS l had never seen any of these in print l remarked upon it. He nn- swered. a little embarrassed:
 Well, you see l don't print theH over my own name "
 l supposed he meant that he used b nom de plume, and as he exhibited no de- sire to be confidential I pressed my in quiries no further. I have since learned that he has for months been supplying one of our society geniuSes with manuscript which that person adopts as her own. She pays him handsomely for the work, and probably gives the manuscript away for the sake of getting it into type.
 There must be plenty of kindred cases to these, for the literary craze is fairly rampant in society, and where two eN- nmples of this form of fraud are tO be found you may be bound that others exist However, 1t is so rarely that literature gets the benefit of a fashionable fad that We can condOne an evil that has a certain alloy of good. In the eXcesses to which vanity win run, this is perhaps the most curious.-Alfred Tumble in The Jour nalist.